Pearls, gin and boots for fishing

Eighty-two-year-old Arthur Scaife of Wanaka remembers vividly the day he met the Queen Mother - she was wearing pearls and thigh-length gumboots.

It was 1966 and he owned Glendhu Station, a high-country beef and sheep run near Wanaka.

The Queen Mother had come to go fishing.

Mr Scaife and his family had been invited to a picnic with her.

"She was just a lovely lady," he recalled yesterday.

"I've got a large photograph of her with her fishing rod in her hand, floppy old hat on, a farm-type sort of jacket and thigh gumboots.

"But on top of all that she had a pearl necklace, which would probably have been the most expensive pearl necklace in the world at the time."

Later that day, after the Scaife family had returned home, the Queen Mother dropped by their house unexpectedly.

But not for the "comfort stop" for which the family had assiduously scrubbed the toilet.

She stopped by, a lady-in-waiting said, because she loved to see how people lived. She asked about the running of a high-country farm and how the mustering teams were organised.

The police had given the family two minutes' warning that she was on her way.

The Queen Mother had been told the visit to the Scaife household had been cancelled but she had said, "No, I want to go and see these people."

Mr Scaife recalled: "Kate, my wife, said to her, 'Ma'am, our two daughters are very keen on horses and riding,' and she said, 'I've got a daughter who's mad on horses, too.' And that was the Queen she was talking about."

The Queen Mother drank two rather large gin and tonics, said Mr Scaife, and loved talking. "Especially after she had her first gin and tonic, she was very relaxed."

She left lipstick on her crystal glass, which the Scaife family kept in a china cabinet for 25 years, until it was accidentally broken.

Mr Scaife still has the visitors' book she signed.

Charlie Layton, of Bucklands Beach, met the Queen Mother in 1923 when he attended a reception put on for London schoolchildren by the Duchess of York, as she was then, and her husband after their wedding.

Mr Layton, who was 11, said he was allowed to attend the afternoon-tea reception as a prize for winning a boxing contest at the Oratory, his school in Chelsea.

"She was grand, she was beautiful, she was such a nice lady," the 90-year-old said yesterday.

"They both shook hands with us. It was such a thrill for us."

Sir Edmund Hillary, who conquered Mt Everest in 1953, first met the Queen Mother that year, when her daughter knighted him and the expedition's leader, Sir John Hunt.

"I had the good fortune to meet the Queen Mother on a number of occasions," Sir Edmund said yesterday.

"She was a delightful lady to talk to and had a very good understanding of the sort of things that I had done and was doing. One enjoyed talking to her.

"I remember her as a very relaxed and cheerful person.

"It was very easy to talk to her about a number of subjects. She would chat away in a very relaxed style and certainly made someone like myself, from half the world away, feel very much at home."